If you’ve been around here a while, you probably know I love reading.  It’s something I’ve loved ever since I was a little child, and one of those habits that I really lean into because it’s both good for me and fun for me!  I set out to read 50 books per year, but as I finished up my Doctorate of Clinical Nutrition last year, I settled for 46.  Goodness knows I read lots that is unaccounted for here through the program!

Each year, I summarize for you the books I read, in hopes that I’ll inspire you to read a few of my favorites.  I’ve categorized them into personal development, health/nutrition, and business/productivity here, and given you a 2-3 sentence summary of each one!  I hope you’ll enjoy and find something that’s perfect for you!

Here are the books I read in 2024, featuring my top recommendations for personal development books, health books, and business/productivity books. #1 in each category is my favorite, and they’re rank ordered!

Personal Development

1. Arete: Activate Your Heroic Potential. Author Brian Johnson is unquestionably one of my favorite modern-day philosophers, integrating ancient wisdom with modern science to deliver quick (1-3 page each) insights on how to live a better life. This entire book is like the pep talk you need (or, that I needed!) to stay focused on what matters, do your best, and become your best self. Whether you’re working to “dominate the fundamentals” (eating, moving, sleeping), building courage or discipline, fostering gratitude or hope, or seeking wisdom from some of the world’s best thinkers, this book is a must-read!
2. Your 168: Finding Purpose and Satisfaction in a Values-Based Life. I’m going to say it straight out: I know my style of overly-thought-out, hyper-planned lifestyle does not appeal to everyone. And that’s OK!  If you’re fitting everything into your life that you want, by all means, keep it up.  For me, and for author Harry Kraemer (who happens to be my favorite professor from my MBA at Kellogg), planning, strategizing, and self-reflecting is the only way to fit everything that is important to me into my 168 hours each week.  If you want to be more intentional about your time, I couldn’t recommend this book more!  There are so very many strategies in this book that I honestly thought I made up for myself, but realized I must have learned from Professor Kraemer back in the day!  My life would not be nearly as fulfilling without these strategies.
3. The Joy of Well-Being: A Practical Guide to a Happy, Healthy, and Long Life. Authors Jason and Colleen Wachob are co-founders of the popular website mindbodygreen and have curated content from thousands of top health influencers, doctors, and medical professionals. They’ve put all of their best knowledge into this book, and it is a fantastic overview of some of the most well-researched (nothing fringey!) health interventions.  If any of it seems basic, ask yourself if you’re really implementing it before you move on!
4. Feel Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You. As someone who lectures on productivity multiples times per month to big corporations, I honestly don’t expect productivity books to be anything new to me.  With this one, though, I was wrong: the refreshing twist on productivity for the purpose of living a more full life was a pleasant surprise!  Rather than just jamming more into the day to get more work done, author Ali Abdaal teaches how to find more joy in what we’re doing, stop procrastinating, and arrange life to fit in more of what we love.
5. Meditations: A New Translation. I’ve had this book for a few years and kept putting it off because it looked “hard” to read.  And in some ways, it was – the writing style takes a bit of interpretation, even though this translation does a great job of preserving what’s important and translating the rest into understandable language.  I shouldn’t have put it off, though – the lessons were incredibly useful.  From exhortations to live your life and not worry what other people think, to reminders that we can only control what we can control and it’s useful to fight the rest – I found a lot of depth in this book!
6. Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. If I were to trust any two people to guide me on life experience and building the life I want, Arthur Brooks and Oprah would be close to the top of the list. They’ve combined their wisdom to give some interesting twists on common “happiness” advice.  This isn’t just “think positively,” but an exploration on how to do that and create a life that truly feels meaningful to you.
7. The Way Forward. I will buy every book author yung pueblo publishes – his writing is that He has a way of conveying perspective-shifting ideas with simple phrases; so simple that some pages only have a few dozen words on them.  The book is a combination of poetry and self-reflection, and I highly recommend it.
8. The Mindful High Performer: Simple Yet Powerful Shifts to Recharge your Mental Health and Perform at Your Best in Work and Life. Author Chelea Pottinger has had a long and winding story with overachieving, anxiety, mental health struggles, and finding balance, and she shares her tips here. The only reason this isn’t higher on the list is that, if you really study this stuff like I do, it feels a bit like a review of things you’ve heard a million times before. But if you’re not already incorporating many self-care practices daily and you identify as a high performer, this is a fantastic place to start!
9. The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. This book reports on the main takeaway of a Harvard study that followed over 100 people for their entire adult lives: relationships are essential for happiness. Those who had deeper connections, better communication, more trust, and more joy in their relationships reported better and happier lives. This sounds like common sense, but sometimes we need reminders of what is most important!
10. On the Shortness of Life: Life is Long if you Know How to Use It. This is a collection of three essays by Seneca, so if you’re like me, you may have to read some sentences twice (and may choose to ignore how he writes about women!).  Putting those two things aside, this was full of such profound meaning for me, most of which is captured in the subtitle: life is long if you know how to live it.
11. Miracles Now: 108 Life-Changing Tools for Less Stress, More Flow, and Finding Your True Purpose. This was an interesting re-read for me, because when it came out in 2015, it was almost too advanced or “out there” for me, and when I reread it in 2024, it was almost too elementary for me. Sometimes it takes reflection to recognize progress!  Still, if you’re looking for ways to feel more aligned and release stress, the tips Gabrielle Bernstein offers are actionable and effective.
12. Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself. Boundaries can be a tough topic … everyone wants them, but few people know how to set them without seeming harsh or unreasonable. This book is a how-to on boundary setting in a variety of different circumstances, and if you find yourself people pleasing or bending over backwards when it’s unnecessary, I recommend it!
13. Experiential Billionaire: Build a Life Rich with Experiences and Die with No Regrets. Jam-packed with fun exercises to make you rethink how you’re living your life and fascinating stories from the awe-inspiring lives of the two authors, this easy read is thought-provoking and uplifting. If you find yourself wondering, “why am I driving so hard?” then this might be a great one for you!
14. The Game of Life and How to Play It. The basic premise is this: we receive back the energy we put into the world, and we create reality with our thoughts and internal dialogue. If you’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, it will, but if you’re constantly expecting great things to happen, they will!  This kind of thinking would have sounded a bit looney to me a decade ago, but I firmly believe it now. This is an easy read full of serendipitous stories and good reminders, but there are more modern versions that may resonate more with most people.
15. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Naval Ravikant is an extremely successful entrepreneur and angel investor, turned semi-philosopher, whose Twitter posts are often “mic drops.”  In this book, author Eric Jorgenson collected quotes from Naval’s speeches, tweets he published, and other words he has written or spoken, and put them together (with Naval’s approval and oversight) into his life lessons.  I liked it, but didn’t love it.
16. You Can Heal Your Life. This book has sold over 50 million copies and has changed millions of people’s lives.  Knowing that alone is enough for me to recommend it highly.  It’s all about how to change our minds and attitudes and belief systems in order to literally heal our lives, and while parts of it can seem (way) far out there, if you read it with an open mind, it is incredibly powerful!  Author Louise Hay also includes a mind-blowing chart connecting physical ailments to various mental patterns, which I wouldn’t recommend as a one and only diagnostic tool, but it can be very insightful to introspect about how we may each be contributing to our own dis-ease.

Business / Productivity

1. 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. This book came out in 2011 (thus the Blackberry references!), but re-reading it in 2024 led to direct changes in my schedule to help me reorient to use my time intentionally in every moment. If you feel you “can’t” do anything you want to do because of your calendar, or you’re struggling to fit everything in, I can’t recommend this one more highly!
2. Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire. For someone in a “treadmill” stage of your business (read: plenty of clients coming in, feels like a well-oiled machine, but unable to go to the next level because every single moment of the week is spent doing the tasks that keep you on the treadmill!), this is a game changer. It really pushed me to think about more things I can outsource and more ways I can help my team expand to take some of the tasks I’ve always done off my plate.
3. Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. My coach sent this to me when I signed up to work with her (at the same time as I was hiring my new nutritionists), and I’m so glad I read it. It’s all about creating a business environment where people are autonomous, feel empowered, and have space to make mistakes – making them more genius rather than having  to be the genius and teach them your  It came at the perfect time and I hope I’ve been able to implement it well!
4. Get Rich, Lucky Bitch: Release Your Money Blocks and Live a First-Class Life. This is a fantastic book if you have mental blocks around money or you feel like you’re holding yourself back financially. I was pleasantly surprised upon reading it to find that I did not have a lot of these money blocks, but the way it is written and the practical tips offered are sure to be well-received by those who do.
5. Feel Free to Prosper … with the Simplest Prosperity Laws Available. You’ll likely notice a trend with the book above this one and below this one on my list. The power of the mind in attracting business success is huge, and no book spells it out more clearly than this one. While it may feel “woo-woo” to some, exploring our mindsets around money and training our thoughts on what we want is extremely powerful.
6. The Magic of Thinking Big. Originally published in the 50s and reprinted in 1987, this book holds time-tested wisdom on how our minds hold us back from our goals – business, family, personal development, health, and more.  It didn’t have anything I would call revolutionary, but every once in a while, I like to step back and read ideas that have persisted for decades to reground my thinking.  I enjoyed this one.
7. Team Work: How to Build a High Performance Team. This book had some great reminders, most notably that people need to pull their weight to have a spot at the company. My issue with it is that the author tried to make it very tactical and specific, but it wound up not as detailed as a full “how to” manual but too specific to be considered an ideas book, making it fall a bit flat.

Health

1. The Cellular Wellness Solution: Tap into Your Full Health Potential with the Science-Backed Power of Herbs. I interviewed author Dr. Rawls on my podcast and read his book in preparation. I was pleasantly surprised by the current, well-researched, actionable health information for a variety of conditions as well as overall health advice on stress management, diet, exercise, and more.  If you’re looking for the next step on your health journey, this could be a good one!
2. The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts. A great read if you’ve been gaslit by practitioners who say your hormonal symptoms are “normal” (also: come to us!  We’ll never gaslight you!).  Mary Clare Haver explores the risk/benefit analysis of using menopausal hormone therapy (MHT), and while she is clearly biased towards using it, she makes great points and offers much-needed compassion to those who are suffering from hormonal symptoms.  In my opinion, she doesn’t probe enough into supplements, dietary changes, and lifestyle changes that we use so effectively in our practice to create change, whether or not the person is going on hormone therapy.  For example, in the section on “fatigue,” her only interventions are to sleep more and exercise, both of which are great but hard to do if you’re already fatigued.  She suggests birth control pills for irregular periods, which we know based on the research often do more harm than good (depending on the situation).  So, overall, I say read this, consider MHT, and consider functional medicine options to complement your journey.
3. Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory. If you’ve been paying attention to Wellness Your Way, you’ve heard about the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. This book takes it one step further and divides into sympathetic, dorsal vagal, and ventral vagal, and helps us as readers understand what various forms of nervous system activation feel like in our bodies and how to tap into various states and return to a state of regulation.  Sounds out there, I know, but it’s relatively easy to understand and a great resource if you feel you have trouble “calming down” or if you get locked into a state of burnout.
4. On the Origin of Being: Understanding the Science of Evolution to Enhance Your Quality of Life. If you’ve ever thought about how today’s living environment is just so … not what we were evolved to live in, this book is for you.  From exploring our disoriented circadian rhythms to our disease-promoting food supply, from our sleep quality to our interactions with other humans and nature itself, this book explores a lot about how humans evolved to live healthily, how our environment isn’t set up to make this easy for us now, and what to do about it.
5. The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living. If you are brand new to stress management practices and shifting mindset, this is a great place to start.  That said, if you’ve read many other books on the topics, this won’t teach you much.  It’s an exploration of how mental reframing can lower the physical implications of stress, and how staying in the present, focusing on gratitude, forgiving others, and intentionally finding the positive can help.

Novels

1. The Beauty of Rain
2. The Stars Don’t Lie
3. Don’t Forget to Write
4. The Whole Time
5. Meadow Falls
6. Write My Name Across the Sky
7. No Place Like Home
8. Blushing in the Big Leagues
9. The Last Stars in the Sky
10. In the Midnight Rain
11. All Our Tomorrows
12. A Piece of Heaven
13. The Lion Women of Tehran
14. Not Quite Enough
15. Not Quite Mine
16. Not Quite Forever
17. Not Quite Perfect
18. Where Butterflies Wander

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️ Want to hear about this topic in audio format? → Check out the podcast episode here!